Company:

Karlshamn is a municipality in the
southeast of Sweden on the Baltic
Sea. Established as a small fishing
village in 1664, Karlshamn has
become a major shipping port and
a thriving metropolis for nearly
32,000 residents. Karlshamn
Kommun is the local authority
responsible for public services such
as schools, childcare, eldercare,
housing, water, sewage and
sanitation.

Challenge:

Backup and recovery of the IT
systems supporting public services
were slow and complicated, putting
availability of public services at risk.

Results:

Ensures availability of public
services

Recovers encrypted files from a
backup quickly: no data lost, no
ransom paid

Saves more than 250 hours and
hundreds of thousands of Kronor
each year

The Business Challenge

Sweden’s 290 municipalities provide a wide range of public services to nearly 10
million people. The best way to ensure public services proceed without interruption
is to protect the IT infrastructure that supports them. For most municipalities, this
means reevaluating backup and recovery in their IT infrastructures.

Karlshamn Kommun found itself reevaluating backup and recovery following a
digital transformation to VMware vSphere. The IT team was using two backup
solutions—one for virtual machine backup and another for file-level backup—
because neither solution could do both adequately.

“We were doing double backup, which required more time, additional effort and
extra backup storage,” said Einar Berntsson, Systems Engineer at Karlshamn
Kommun. “We didn’t mind the added work, but backup and recovery were slow and
complicated. We didn’t want to put public services at risk.”

No municipality wants to put public services at risk. Public services must be
available when they are needed, including health care for the elderly.

“Nurses provide in-home care 24.7.365, which means they require access to
patients’ health records 24.7.365,” Berntsson said. “If the databases containing
health records fail, we have to be able to recover them fast so nurses can provide
care to patients.”

Another important public service is education. Karlshamn Kommun provides
schooling for 6,000 students, and each child receives a computer. The IT team
backs up students’ computers and each school’s education management system.
Data must be available when students and teachers need access to it.

“Supporting the delivery of public services is a major part of our job in IT,” Berntsson
said. “If the IT systems that support public services aren’t backed up reliably and
recovered quickly, we’re not doing our job. Doing double backup wasn’t the best use
of our time or resources.”

Berntsson and his colleagues found a solution that is worth their time and
resources: Veeam® Backup & Replication™.

The Veeam Solution

There’s a reason more than one-third of Sweden’s 290 municipalities use Veeam:
Veeam helps them ensure availability of public services. Public services are vital to
the social fabric of each community.

“Public services are only valuable to residents if they’re available, and Veeam helps
us make sure they’re available,” Berntsson said.

Veeam provides Karlshamn Kommun with additional benefits. After a CryptoLocker
virus took control of an employee’s computer, Veeam recovered every encrypted
file from a backup. No data was lost and no ransom was paid, thanks to fast, reliable
backup and recovery.

Fast, reliable backup and recovery also enable Karlshamn Kommun to meet
recovery time and point objectives (RTPO™). Before deploying Veeam, the IT team
struggled to meet RTPO.

Veeam saves Karlshamn Kommun time and money too. Recovery is 50 percent
faster with Veeam, saving the IT team more than 250 hours each year. And,
Veeam is 25 percent less expensive than the previous backup solutions. That
savings, combined with a 50 percent savings in backup storage (the IT team
performed double backup before Veeam, plus Veeam has built-in deduplication and
compression) adds up to hundreds of thousands of Kronor each year.

“Veeam is fast and easy to use—that’s the reason for our success,” Berntsson said.
“Saving time and money gives us the opportunity to consider additional IT initiatives
that will further protect and improve public services.”

Two of these initiatives are Veeam Backup from Storage Snapshots and Veeam
Explorer™ for Storage Snapshots. Karlshamn Kommun’s virtual machines reside on
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) 3PAR StoreServ Storage, and Veeam offers highspeed
backup and recovery from HPE 3PAR StoreServ snapshots, with no impact on
the production environment. Veeam and HPE enable customers to reduce RTPO to
fewer than 15 minutes.

The Results

Ensures availability of public services
Veeam protects public services by providing Karlshamn Kommun with fast,
reliable backup and recovery. Not even ransomware could prevent Karlshamn
Kommun from delivering public services.

Recovers encrypted files from a backup quickly: no data lost, no ransom paid
Ransomware is on the rise in the public sector, often infiltrating local
governments. Files are encrypted and irretrievable unless an exorbitant ransom is
paid. Karlshamn Kommun recovered encrypted files from a Veeam backup quickly
and easily.

Saves more than 250 hours and hundreds of thousands of Kronor each year
Recovery is 50 percent faster with Veeam, saving time. Veeam is 25% more costeffective
than legacy backup, saving money.